MFA Candidate Spotlight: Kaleena Stasiak

Kaleena Stasiak, eternal return, 2018

The Georgia Museum of Art will soon host the annual Master of Fine Arts Degree Candidates exit show. The exhibition will display the creative works of 16 students slated to graduate from the Lamar Dodd School of the Art in May. This week, we continue to spotlight a few of these unique artists with information on Kaleena Stasiak.

Kaleena Stasiak grew up near Niagara Falls before moving to Toronto, where she received her bachelor’s degree in printmaking from the Ontario College of Art and Design. She then found herself drawn to the interdisciplinary nature of the master of fine arts program at the University of Georgia. She continued her studies in printmaking and book arts, but has recently ventured into more three-dimensional works made of ceramics, wood and foam. Her works in the upcoming MFA Degree Candidates exit show will mainly feature the latter two categories.

Through her work, Stasiak responds to the history of the South and how that history is represented today. Southern architecture and domestic objects tell the story of “us,” a fact readily seen in her art. From hand turning spindles to carving foam, Stasiak’s works evidence a beautiful and intriguing foray into Southern material culture. Her own adventure, a perpetual learning experience, takes viewers into the world of the South, turning truths the audience might take for granted on their heads.

Stasiak is “curious about exploring . . . how tourism is marketed in the South,” and, as she recognizes her own tendency to romanticise the South, she “also wants to subvert then call into question things that are glossed over.”

As she plays with key architectural and material tropes, she leads the viewer to appreciate and simultaneously question southern romanticism. Viewers will certainly leave her portion of the exit show considering familiar local buildings and heirloom furniture in a new light.

To see Stasiak’s work, along with that of all the other MFA candidates, you can visit the exit show, on view April 7 – May 20, 2018.

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Savannah Guenthner

Intern, Department of Communications

Modern Living: Giò Ponti and the 20th-Century Aesthetics of Design

“Modern Living: Giò Ponti and the 20th-Century Aesthetics of Design” opens this Saturday, June 10, and will be on view through Sunday, September 17th. The exhibition focuses on furniture and decorative objects by Giò Ponti, an Italian designer and architect, whose iconic career spanned almost 60 years. The Georgia Museum of Art has also published an accompanying full-color catalogue written by curator Perri Lee Roberts, available now at the Museum Shop.

Giò Ponti, chest of drawers, ca. 1955

Ponti’s work combines traditional and modern techniques and materials, a rarity in Italian design at the time. He promoted new concepts of modern living and influenced the public’s ideals on design by exposing them to works from the United States and Europe as well as his own works. Ponti aimed to modernize the Italian manufacturing process and promote the artistic design of industrial products. This artistic design can be found in a plethora of Ponti’s creations, from ceramics, to glassware, and even a coffee pot he designed.

Giò Ponti and Piero Fornasetti, Madrepore table and four armchairs, ca. 1950

Ponti’s attention to detail and design can be seen in his and Piero Fornasetti’s design  known as the Madrepore dining suite. The “dining suite” consists of four beautifully crafted chairs and a large, bowl-shaped table. The entire set is a captivating robin egg blue; the table is made of a lithograph transfer-print and lacquered wood, brass, glass and silk. The lithograph print is of stony coral (madrepore in Italian) and covers the top, sides and legs of the table. The top of the table mimics a tide pool with its concave base covered by a piece of glass, as if while sitting at the table, you were given a secret glimpse of a tide pool full of the fauna of the ocean. This attention to detail is what makes Ponti’s work so intriguing and influential.

Exhibition catalogue available
now at the Museum Shop.

“The most resistant element is not wood, is not stone, is not steel, is not glass. The most resistant element in building is art. Let’s make something very beautiful.”

Ponti’s influence is still prevalent today. In Milan, his Pirelli skyscraper stands tall among classical and modern structures. His Via Dezza chair, created for his own home, is still produced by Molteni & C, an Italian furniture company. Retailers are mass-producing silverware sets with his design. The combination of art and design is what makes Ponti’s works so relevant. Ponti said, “The most resistant element is not wood, is not stone, is not steel, is not glass. The most resistant element in building is art. Let’s make something very beautiful.” Ponti’s works are timeless and elegant, sleek and practical; they combine the beauty of art with the stability of architecture and furniture. It’s no wonder Giò Ponti is known as the father of modern Italian design.

Stephanie Motter
Communications Intern

Martin Johnson Heade and Cherokee Roses

Beginning June 3, the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia will present the exhibition “The Genius of Martin Johnson Heade,” organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Although the exhibition includes landscapes, seascapes and Heade’s trademark paintings of tropical birds and flowers, it does not include any of his Cherokee Rose images. The Cherokee Rose (Rosa laevigata) is the state flower of Georgia.

To remedy this situation, Mrs. Deen Day Sanders, a noted art collector, gardener, philanthropist and Georgian, has agreed to lend Heade’s painting of two Cherokee Roses to the museum, along with four other works by Heade. Mrs. Sanders’ paintings will make up a small supplementary exhibition, on view the same dates as “The Genius of Martin Johnson Heade.”

Martin Johnson Heade, Cherokee Roses, n.d.

Nearly forgotten for the first part of the 20th century, Heade’s paintings were rediscovered around World War II and Heade is now recognized as one of the most important American painters of the 19th century. His works are in the collections of many major museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which has the largest public collection of Heade’s paintings.

Botanical illustration of the 
Cherokee Rose engraved by 
Pierre Joseph Redouté (1759–1840).
Image: New York Public 
Library Digital Collections 

Heade devoted equal time to landscape, marine and still-life subjects, but is best known for his studies of tropical birds and flowers. He began painting still lifes of flowers native to the southeastern United States when he moved to Florida, in 1884. Heade’s paintings of magnolias (two of which are included in the MFA Boston’s exhibition) date from the same era.

T.E. Stebbins, author of the catalogue raisonné on Heade, writes, “These paintings of Cherokee Roses . . . have a lushness and an aggressive confidence that far surpass [Heade’s] accomplishment in landscape during the same years and are more successful than those of northern roses in the same setting.”

Mrs. Sanders will also lend Heade’s paintings “Apple Blossoms,” “The Meadow,” “Still Life with Glass of Roses” and “A Red Rose” from her collection.

Sarah Kate Gillespie, the museum’s curator of American art, said, “The loan of these important works from Mrs. Sanders beautifully augments the pieces in the MFA Boston’s exhibition, as they feature Heade’s other well-known floral subjects: the rose and the apple blossom. The rose in particular was a significant subject for Heade, as he painted both the red rose and the Cherokee Rose more than any other American artist in the 19th century, and we are thrilled to be able to share these works, as well as the meticulously rendered landscape, with our visitors.”

Hillary Brown

Director of Communications

Gio Ponti: Artist, Architect, Writer, Designer, and Visionary

The Georgia Museum of Art recently acquired four plates and a platter designed by Gio Ponti (1891–1979) a famous Milanese architect and designer. Ponti worked as the artistic director and designer for the Florentine firm Richard-Ginori, which manufactured ceramics, from 1923 to 1938: this served as the beginning of his long career designing other household and decorative items, such as furniture, glassware and silverware. He also designed apartment buildings, palazzos and public buildings of all types, including business towers and university buildings. He was the editor and founder of both Domus and Stile magazines, dedicated to Italian architecture and the decorative arts, and he served as professor of architecture at Politecnico di Milano University for 25 years.

Typical of Italian decorative arts in the 1920s and 1930s, Ponti appears to have been inspired by ancient classical artwork, in this case Etruscan. Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime encouraged a conscious return to Italy’s ancient roots, seeking to instill in all Italians a pride in their heritage and a belief that they were destined to rebuild the ancient Roman Empire. Although Ponti engaged with the Fascist regime and shared its appreciation for classical culture, he was essentially apolitical.

Ponti also appears to have been inspired by scenes from contemporary life, as the charming circus figures on these platters show. Later in his career, he became known for his sleek, modern designs, such as his Superleggera furniture and the Pirelli Tower. An artist and visionary of extraordinary versatility, Ponti’s life and work will be highlighted in an upcoming summer 2017 exhibition at the Georgia Museum of Art, which will focus on his furniture design.

For more information about Gio Ponti and his art: www.gioponti.com.

Rebecca Stapleford
Publications Intern